Well, I have it on good authority that the channel doesn’t air in that particular country anymore, but a relative of mine who is in the fashion design world made me wise to a trend which basically confirms that we’re living in an increasingly disposable world. The channel in question was Fashion TV, which apparently used to air in South Africa among other countries in the Southern Hemisphere, but the content was never adapted to the local markets.
In other words, when he had winter here in the Northern Hemisphere and the featured content was geared towards winter fashion, that’s what they saw in the Southern Hemisphere as well, unaltered.
That’s probably not so bad though, except it shone the light on an underlying practice which essentially makes clothes fall under the category of consumable items. When it’s winter here in the north, it’s summer in the south and so by the time summer hits them in the Southern Hemisphere they basically adopt the winter fashion which they’ve been made to admire all summer long. For them this is some forthcoming fashion and it all works the same the other way around, when it’s summer here and winter there.
It gets more interesting than that though, because what happens is they don’t even wait for the trendy garments to come from known fashion producers and outlets in the north. Rather, local designers send off the designs they see on channels such as Fashion TV to China and other Asian countries where there’s some cheap labour on offer, only to have those fashion items produced and shipped-in just in time for the forthcoming season, to be subsequently sold.
There’s more…
The quality of the garments is so bad that they can only really be worn once or twice, but that’s by design! People have become creative in their approach and attitudes to fashion, mixing and matching their attire to come up with new looks that essentially recycle their old clothes, but manufacturers have become wise to this so they create garments that are flimsy and don’t last long. They’ve created disposable clothing, which falls apart after one or two uses and washes, at worst.
This is a trend which can generally be seen in pretty much every area of our lives. It’s no longer just a few consumer goods which effectively have planned obsolescence built into them, but rather pretty much everything in your home.
Naturally some goods which have their life spans intentionally limited in this way are made to last a little longer than others, because I mean you can’t be buying a fridge every money, but generally things don’t quite last as long as they did.
The most effective way to counter this is by sourcing high-quality products and goods from trusted suppliers you’ve probably been made wise to already. In my personal case Jacamo is one such clothing outlet which I trust to stock high-quality clothing, most of which is some branded clothing items.
I’m not quite ready to have my family consuming clothes like we do food!
